I think Bethan is quite right: we are different, we can do things differently and we are leading the way in many things—domestic violence, modern slavery, recycling; we're doing lots of things. We are a thriving nation with capacity to empower people and serve our people, but we are failing one area here. We are failing the citizens who have to go through that system and their outcomes. The problem is, perhaps, that the system is not under our control. It's the system that currently exists, it's a penal system we have imposed upon us, and it's a system that is actually putting our citizens—and those of neighbouring nations, to be fair; it's English prisoners as well—at severe risk. It's failing to deliver an improvement on reducing reoffending, and it's failing on the safe management of the inmates in the system.

Now, evidence from various reports has been mentioned before, including Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, and its last annual report from the chief inspector, Peter Clarke, identified that several establishments are bad. They're not considered fit for purpose. They're failing inmates, they're failing the inmates' families. He stresses that too many of our prisons have become unacceptably violent and dangerous places. The proportion of prisons that have been considered good or better, following inspection, has fallen from 76 per cent to 49 per cent in just one year. Now, this failure is echoed by representatives from the Prison Governors Association and the Prison Officers Association, who continually raise their deep concerns over the impact that reducing budgets has had on the service and its ability to improve delivery of services against the set targets that it's given.

The recent report on Swansea prison demonstrates that the service is overstretched and struggling to meet the demands placed upon it to manage the penal system and ensure that it's able to help inmates rehabilitate into their communities, thus reduce reoffending rates in Wales. Now, whilst this may be used as an argument to—. Well, basically, because Swansea is, actually, as you highlighted, the most overpopulated prison, percentage-wise in the UK—. Just because you've got more spaces, it doesn't mean to say that the system works. So, it should be ringing alarm bells, actually, to talk about sentencing guidelines and are they suitable for the modern day and the Government's ambition to reduce reoffending rates.

The difficulties faced by prisons across England and Wales are well documented, with many instances of unrest in establishments, some requiring specialist teams to restore order; serious assaults—an increase of over 200 per cent since 2013, according to the Ministry of Justice's own figures; injuries to prison staff and increases in self-harm rates of inmates, including suicides. These all indicate a need to take more radical action to improve the existing service and look at many aspects, which may fall outside the remit of various aspects. At the moment, it's outside our remit, in one sense, but we should be having that, and perhaps we'll come back to that point later.

The former Secretary of State—. We talked about the current Secretary of State—I think it's David Gauke. The former Secretary of State, David Lidington, stated his reasons last August that there need to be moves to reduce the prison population—yes, reduce the prison population—but then they spend £1.3 billion—not £200 million, £1.3 billion—on increasing the prison population. So, it doesn't seem to fit in quite well. We need to reform the penal system, amend the sentencing guidelines, and consider alternative approaches other than incarceration, which would reduce the number of individuals who are given custodial sentences. It's well overdue, and perhaps these changes should now be given to us in Wales because we can act on it, because we will not let it become overdue.

Yesterday I asked the First Minister a question based upon the conclusions of research into the size of prisons that smaller prisons have better outcomes than larger ones, both for prisoners and communities. Small prisons are often more effectively run. They have lower levels of violence, better staff-inmate relationships, greater focus on resettlement, better facilities for contact between prisoners and their families, and, as someone mentioned already, the Lord Farmer report highlighted these aspects.